


The Hosts

by VeronicaRich



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Building Relationship, F/M, Fandom Trumps Hate, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2019-10-20 20:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17628860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeronicaRich/pseuds/VeronicaRich
Summary: Rimmer introduces a big change into Lister's life ... in more ways than one.





	1. The Intro

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twistedsardonic (sfvamp)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfvamp/gifts).



> This is a late-posted entry for 2018 Fandom Trumps Hate. It's a WIP but will be updated regularly. :-)

“I think I know just the place.” So had begun their weirdest adventure, the one Lister never thought he’d get a crack at again even after more than a decade of hoping.

Rimmer returning after six years away seemed a distant memory, even if it had only been a few months ago; then again, other days it felt like the _Wildfire_ had materialized out of the sky to pull them out of the GELF-gone-wrong negotiations just earlier this week. Time, in Dave Lister’s life, was so far outside normal that it wasn’t just relative, it was a non-construct these days.

Seeing Ace show up to smooth-talk the GELFs out of an annoyingly rightful claim for payment of scavenged parts had been shocking in itself ... but him not reverting entirely to Rimmer after they were all to safety really played hell with Lister’s memory. As he watched the altered hologram interact with Cat and Kryten with grace and even what might have been genuine interest over the next few days, Lister felt like he’d tipped back too much of the GELF hooch in negotiations and was still locked in a hallucinatory state.

The tipper came when one night as he was manning the drive room, Rimmer wandered in and looked around, sighed, and pointedly caught his crewmate’s eye. “Long time stuck in one place,” he said, almost empathetically.

Lister raised an eyebrow. “Is this like reverse charades? You say something blindingly obvious and I’ve got to figure out how to pantomime it, or something?” Rimmer snorted, and it was almost the old derisive manner, complete with vibrating giant nostrils.

“Fair enough.” Rimmer sat at his station and rubbed at something on the keypad with his sleeve. “I was actually going to say, I’ve been thinking I might have a solution for that.” Lister waited on the pause, then swiveled to face him, realizing Rimmer wanted an audience. “Something better than the AR suite.”

“We going back to London before my birthday and kidnapping me from buying that Monopoly board?”

Oddly, Rimmer smiled and shook his head. “As tempting as it is to find your younger self and introduce him to the wonders of soap and scrub brushes, I was thinking more of a current relocation.”

“Another ship?” Rimmer made a humming sound and tilted his head. “A planet?”

“Ground, sun, water, maybe even some snow.”

“What’s the catch?” Lister half-joked.

“I’m not sure you’re going to believe me until I show you.”


	2. Chapter 2

“It’s not so much that I didn’t believe you, as I didn’t think we could all squeeze into that space Ferrari of yours,” Lister observed as he bowed backwards, still trying to get the ache out of his cramped muscles nearly an hour after the _Wildfire_ had touched down. He heard a crack from somewhere in the middle of his back, which briefly arrested movement as he assessed its severity.

If Rimmer heard the bone fireworks, he didn’t show it. “I didn’t promise a luxurious ride,” he noted as he too surveyed a not-distant shoreline through the spaceport window.

“Or deliver.” Lister rolled his torso until he was bent to the side, doing the same thing briefly, before straightening up. His head spun from the newly-freed flow of blood back to his brain. “Tell me this is the last of the trip,” he yawned.

“More or less. It’s jumpers from here out to the village.” He looked over at Lister’s calisthenics. “Least the gravity’s lighter enough from the ship here, you can stop popping like the microwave on movie night.”

“Lighter?” He cocked an eyebrow as he stomped his booted foot a couple times. “Seems 1-G enough to me.”

“Inside here, the port authority sets it for what you’re used to, so visitors aren’t so thrown off. But once you step out, you’re going to have a spring in your step. It’s a moon - only about sixty or so percent of the Earth. It’s about what the domes on Io were programmed to, inside away from the real surface.”

“Oh yeah? So how tall would you’ve been if you’d grown up on Earth - like five-foot-one?” he teased.

Rimmer raised both his eyebrows at that. “Wellllll … somebody’s been studying science. Good on you, Listy.” His tone brimmed with sarcasm. “Watch out, Hawking.”

“Hey, of you and me, one’s alive and one’s not.” Lister jammed a thumb into his own chest. “Guess which bloke I am.” For a moment, one of the ancient Rimmer expressions crossed his pilot’s face, a flash-second twist of the corner of his mouth that would have preceded a cutting remark missing the humor entirely. Rimmer seemed to weigh and reconsider, then settle on a cool sort of disdain. “Cockroaches, Listy. It’s not too difficult to scuttle away from nuclear blast.” He narrowed his eyes, and so did the other man, which they managed to maintain until Lister grinned first.

“Bastard.”

“Just my duty,” Rimmer reminded him.

“We all know that already,” came a familiar voice behind Lister. “But you promised me shiny stuff, non-bud. When’re we getting to it?”

“Well, it IS a whole new planet. Moon,” Rimmer pointed out, gesturing out the window. “Literally, though … let's just say very soon you'll see some.” He was saying some other things to Cat, but Lister’s attention was drawn by something far more pressing. A group of people - people? - were approaching from the other end of the concourse.

Rimmer had told him. He had prepared Lister for this moon, for the society built up on it, for the villages scattered around the one city on its surface … for the population. Of people. Other human beings. Living DNA of the human race. And yet, it had seemed a distant notion beyond his current grasp of reality. He didn’t realize he’d moved away from his companions until he felt a blocky hand on his forearm. “Sir? Mr. Lister, sir - are you quite all right? Can you hear me?”

“Eh?” he heard himself say aloud, as though from somewhat far away. Kryten spoke more, but Lister didn’t hear it. His head was roaring with his increased heart rate, anxiousness and dread and excitement in his gut. He didn’t realize he was physically backing up until he felt something solid against his back, and a quiet voice at his ear. “Steady on, Listy,” it said, oddly calming him for all the times it had wound him up. “Take it slow.”

“Those are people,” he mused, eyes still fixed on the small approaching delegation. For emphasis, he pointed. _Well done, Dave,_ his brain supplied. _All that lager didn’t hurt brain cells, now did it?_ “I mean- That is, it’s … people.”

Rimmer stepped away from his back, to his side instead. “Glad to see they’re still alive,” he murmured, rubbing his chin. Lister wondered what _that_ was supposed to mean. As if reading his mind, the other man looked over and shrugged at him. “We’re basically meatbags flung out in space further than we were intended to go; you never know if a group you find will still be there when you go back later.”

“And yet, you brought us here.” Lister pointed at the ground. “My _hero_ ,” he added with no small sarcasm. Rimmer subtly, quickly flashed him the bird before putting on a big smile and clasping his hands to greet the people drawing nearer. ‘Ogolo!” he called. “So glad you were able to get away to make it!”

“And miss the first Earth human to set foot on Plymouth in five hundred years?” The - woman, Lister guessed - called back. “I wouldn’t be doing my job very well if I didn’t greet such a luminary personally.”

“Luminary?” Lister muttered sotto voce.

“It’s called PR,” Rimmer whispered back, as Cat and Kryten approached from Lister’s other side. “Just go along with it for now.”

The woman came to a stop several feet away and inclined a slight bow; when Rimmer did the same, Lister followed suit. “Hi,” he offered, rather weakly; he had no sense of the rank this person carried or what was expected of him. She could have been anything from an infodesk warmer up to Queen of the Galaxy. “Looks like a nice moon.”

Ogolo seemed pleased at that, her smile widening. “We’ve done a lot with it in the last few centuries, but it’s mostly the terraforming the original settlers carried out that makes or breaks a new residence.” She glanced to Rimmer, then back at him. “Do I understand you are Mr. Lister?”

“Um, you could just call me-” He paused, having to remember. “Dave is fine.” He’d never been called Lister until Mimas, when he’d gone with it because he didn’t want to hand out something as personal as a first name to hopper passengers and bartenders; all his buddies before the Great Monopoly Migration had always called him either Dave or some insulting lad-name. Except for Gran, who had insisted on “David” until her last breath. He hesitated, then stuck out his hand to shake, leaning forward a bit.

She looked at it, then to Rimmer and the three people to her side, clearly confused. “It’s a handshake, Mim,” Rimmer explained. He turned toward Lister and shook his proffered hand briefly to demonstrate. “It’s a greeting from Old Earth.”

“Curious!” she observed, tone matching the word. “And you just-” She reached forward and took Lister’s hand in the same manner, doing nothing but clasping it. “Hold hands, in greeting?”

Lister tightened his grip very slightly, as he’d always done with women’s handshakes, not wanting to crush it like men loved to do to one another, and gave it a couple of gentle pumps. “You shake a bit,” he answered, then released his grip. Ogolo, however, didn’t get the memo and held onto his hand. “Er - I mean, it doesn’t last long,” he added, and she released his fingers.

“It was an ancient tradition,” Rimmer put in.

“Nifty.” Ogolo met Lister’s eyes. “Ace told us about your situation on the spaceship, and how you would be able to add to our society. He said you are an expert with mechanicals and good at teaching others.”

“Did he now.” He slid a brief sideways look to Rimmer that he hoped conveyed the conversation they would be having later about Rimmer using the word “expert” for anything involving his abilities that didn’t get followed by “time-waster” or “gimboid.”

To his left, he heard Cat catch on a few seconds after the fact. “Ace?”

“Yes,” she nodded as she transferred her attention to the new person, then her brows drew together in confusion. “Is that not what you call him?”

“Oh, no - it’s what we call him,” Lister interrupted whatever the felinoid had been about to wisecrack. It hadn’t occurred to him these people would know Rimmer exclusively by his slicker, more confident alter ego, although he couldn’t say why; it seemed logical, given how Rimmer had explained it was how he came across the colony in the first place. “It’s just-” He realized he didn’t know if they knew his real first name. “Sometimes we just call him Rimmer.”

“And other things!” Cat brightly added. Lister subtly kicked the side of his boot into Cat’s ankle. “HEY!”

“This is Cat,” Rimmer rushed to introduce him. “The one I told you could sew and was good with textiles and designs.” Lister marked the change in Cat’s expression, as he visibly preened. _Just how much had “Ace” been flattering them ahead of their arrival?_ “And over there is Kryten, the service mechanoid who would undoubtedly be glad to offer advice for organizing your new government building?”

Ogolo nodded a few times at the group, her eyes raking along them in survey. “I look forward to talking with all of you at length. But right now, I think it’s best to get you settled in temporary lodgings so you can rest for the festivities.”

“You’re having festivities … what, for us?” Lister ventured, uncertain.

“Oh!” Rimmer scrunched his eyes shut and winced. “I saw the date; it didn’t even occur to me, Mim. Are we messing up your preparations?” The woman waved him off with a gesture and a, “Not at all, Commander. But I do need to get back to things, so if you’ll follow my staffers here, Chod and the others’ll get you where you need to be for now.” To the other three she only smiled. “It’s an auspicious time for you to arrive - a whole new year to get started on.”

As she swept away, all three looked to Rimmer. “Well?” Lister prodded when he didn’t explain. “Festivities?"


End file.
